Bonni Stachowiak: Teaching in Higher Ed

Bonni is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Business and Management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, she was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. Bonni is the author of The Productive Online and Offline Professor: A Practical Guide*.

Bonni and I discuss our eight suggestions for managing up:

1) Support your manager publicly: Avoid gossip if you can, and when someone is truly trying to problem solve, do your best to help them understand each side of the situation instead of being critical. One of the fastest ways to lose trust with your manager is for them to discover you’ve been speaking poorly about them behind their backs.

2) Tell your manager what you are planning: It rarely is a problem to over communicate something…most people take the opposite position and don’t communicate enough. Talking openly about what you are planning to do is helpful when the outcome your manager expects isn’t 100% clear – or if your manager has a history of changing their mind about a project without sharing that change.

3) Avoid surprises: Managers and people named Bonni don’t like surprises…and none of us want to be caught off guard in a difficult situation. Help your manager save face by informing them when something doesn’t go as planned. This is hard is your manager is the “shoot the messenger” type, but it’s still an essential way to build trust over the long-term.

4) Come to the table with solutions: This goes right along with number #3. Absolutely address things quickly when there are issues, but also come to the table with a game plan for how it will get resolved. Your plan doesn’t need to be perfect, but it does need to reflect that you’ve done serious thinking about the problem and are ready and willing to put your talents into practice to resolve the issue.

5) Connect requests to their priorities: Most managers care about impact and sustainability. That means that whatever you are trying to do to influence your manager should align with the core mission of the organization and/or provide additional revenue or cost savings. If you can’t make the case for either of those two areas, you’re probably barking the wrong bark up the tree.

6) Spend time thinking through what your boss won’t: Everyone has their strengths and everyone has their blind spots. You do a huge service to your manager when you determine where they don’t have strengths and do whatever you can to support them in that areas through ideas, proposals, and actions.

7) Don’t go over their head: Unless it’s a serious ethical or legal situation, avoid trying to influence your manager by going over their head. Usually this only works once (the first time) and you’ll pay the price for a long time after that, assuming you are still around.

8) Get advice from others you trust: Talk to other people who know your manager and the things they care about. Learn about their style. Getting helpful advice from others can help you position your requests in the right way. Even if you don’t dialogue about it, observe what others do to influence your manager successfully.

Remember, you won’t always get what you want – and sometimes that is a good thing.

Finally, don’t get discouraged if you don’t see people playing by the same rules. You can really do amazing things if you do these eight things with consistency!

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